1. Technical Field
One or more embodiments of the present invention generally relate to processing images for use in a safety system of a vehicle.
2. Background Art
According to a 2004 report published by National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), approximately 23,000 persons were killed or injured in vehicle crashes while driving under extreme weather conditions. A number of these injuries or deaths may have occurred while driving in the presence of foggy conditions. The main factor for accidents in foggy weather conditions is reduced driver visibility of the road. New safety systems in vehicles today utilize vision based systems to detect objects in the road that may pose a collision threat to a vehicle and warn the driver of an impending collision. Since safety systems rely on various vision based systems to detect objects, such systems should be able to quickly identify whether an object posses a threat to the driver based on the image captured by the vision system, particularly when the vehicle is being operated in extreme weather conditions. Conventional approaches merely eliminate distortion in a captured image by decreasing contrast in the image. Such an approach produces a darker image and does not fully remove the distortion or noise generated in the captured image due the image being captured in extreme weather conditions.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to implement an image processing device that removes noise or distortion generated in a captured image due to the presence of rain, fog, sleet or any other element generated due to extreme weather conditions being present at the time the original image was captured.